{"id":15077,"date":"2026-05-12T05:12:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T05:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/15077\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T05:12:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T05:12:49","slug":"italy-population-migration-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/15077\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy – Population, Migration, Aging"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Throughout the centuries, Italy\u2019s population curve has undergone many changes, often in parallel development with population trends in other European countries. The mid-14th-century plague<\/a> reduced the peninsula\u2019s population considerably, and a long period of population growth<\/a> ended at the beginning of the 17th century. From the early 18th century until unification in the 1860s, a slight, steady growth prevailed, although it was interrupted during the Napoleonic Wars<\/a>. From the latter half of the 19th century to the latter half of the 20th century, the population more than doubled, despite high levels of emigration. Interestingly, the natural population increase was frequently highest during the decades of highest emigration, although there is no obvious causal relationship between the two.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s overall demographic<\/a> trends are still fairly consistent with those of other advanced western European countries, which experienced declining fertility and mortality rates following World War II<\/a>. The growth rate of the population is gradually slowing, with most of the increase coming from immigration; birth rates and death rates are virtually identical. However, the national figures conceal contrasting regional trends. In general, the birth rate<\/a> and average family size are higher in the south of Italy than in the north, although populations in Molise<\/a>, Basilicata<\/a>, and Calabria<\/a> are declining through continued emigration. The mortality<\/a> rate is slightly lower in the south than in the north as a result of improved medical care and a younger population; in certain northern regions, especially Liguria<\/a>, populations are decreasing because the birth rate is falling faster than the mortality rate. For the country<\/a> as a whole, life expectancy<\/a> rose during the second half of the 20th century, reflecting higher nutritional, sanitary, and medical standards.<\/p>\n

Since the unification of Italy<\/a> in the mid-19th century, internal movements have followed a regular pattern\u2014south to north and east to west. People have moved from the southern regions and Sicily<\/a> to the central regions of Lazio<\/a> and Tuscany<\/a> and to the northwest\u2014to Lombardy<\/a>, Liguria, and Piedmont<\/a>. They moved in the same way from Veneto<\/a> to the northwest. Movement from Emilia-Romagna<\/a>, Marche<\/a>, and Umbria<\/a> to regions in the northwest has also been significant. Population movement was relatively slight during the fascist era between the wars, when permits were required for movement inside the country. Exceptionally, substantial numbers of Italians seeking work at the huge Lingotto vehicle factory run by Fiat<\/a> were granted permits to go to Turin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After World War II and the demise<\/a> of fascism<\/a>, Italy entered a period of unprecedented economic growth<\/a> and high population mobility. The prosperity of the urban areas, especially the industrial triangle of Lombardy-Piedmont-Liguria, contrasted with continuing hardship and poverty in the upland and rural areas, especially in the south. Rapid industrialization in the urban centers acted as a strong \u201cpull\u201d factor, encouraging rural workers to abandon the land and head for the cities. The disparity<\/a> of wealth and of employment between urban and rural areas triggered a period of intense rural depopulation from the uplands in the Alps<\/a>, the Apennines, Sicily, and Calabria and an influx of migrants to Rome<\/a>, Milan<\/a>, Turin, and Genoa<\/a>. This movement continues today, although the slowing of economic growth has reduced the \u201cpull\u201d exerted by the industrial areas. Unemployment runs high, especially among the young.<\/p>\n

In nearly a century between 1876 and 1970, an estimated 25 million Italians left the country in search of work. Of those, 12 million left for destinations outside Europe<\/a>. In the 1860s, transatlantic migration was most frequent among northern Italians and was often associated with certain trades; for example, farmers, artists, and street traders tended to emigrate to the United States<\/a>. Two decades later, however, the trend<\/a> had become a mass phenomenon, with the main migrants increasingly emanating from the south. Their principal destination was the United States, favored by more than half the emigrants, the others choosing Argentina<\/a>, Brazil<\/a>, and Canada<\/a>. Some also went to Australia<\/a>. In the 1920s the United States introduced strict immigration laws, and economic conditions in Brazil and Argentina deteriorated so much that transatlantic emigration was stymied. In addition, the fascist regime opposed emigration, and during World War II emigration halted almost completely. After 1945 destinations were mainly European, the most popular being France<\/a> initially and then West Germany<\/a> and Switzerland<\/a>. During that period the nature of emigration patterns changed, becoming less stable. In many cases the emigrants were mostly male, as some European countries refused entry to workers\u2019 relatives because of housing shortages. Often Italian workers would remain abroad for short periods of time, returning every so often to Italy. On the eve of the 1973 oil embargo<\/a>, more than 850,000 Italians were working in Switzerland and countries of the European Economic Community<\/a> (EEC; later succeeded by the European Union<\/a> [EU]), where the ensuing recession and rising unemployment forced many Italians back home.<\/p>\n

In 1972 Italy for the first time registered more people entering the country than leaving, in part because of repatriation but also as a result of immigration<\/a> from Asia<\/a>, Africa, and Latin America. For several years the scale of the influx<\/a> of non-European immigrants was difficult to assess, as no policy existed either to measure or to control it until the mid-1980s. The collapse of communist regimes in eastern Europe brought fresh waves of immigrants from Poland<\/a>, Romania<\/a>, Albania<\/a>, and the Yugoslav region. Many arrived via seaports on the Adriatic coast, claiming refugee status. Some were repatriated, but others were relocated to inland destinations. An ongoing difficulty is the flow of illegal immigrants from Albania. In 2017 there were about five million foreigners in Italy, more than two-thirds of whom were from non-EU countries. The majority of new arrivals settled in the north and center of Italy, and the south had a relatively higher proportion of African and North American immigrants than the north.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout the centuries, Italy\u2019s population curve has undergone many changes, often in parallel development with population trends in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2756,3236,3235,3234,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-15077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-italy","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-britannica","10":"tag-encyclopeadia","11":"tag-encyclopedia","12":"tag-italy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}